Cave Beneath the Sea

by Edward Willett

  “Just because he told us we have to stay put doesn’t mean we have to stay put,” Wally pointed out. “He’s not the boss of us.”

  Ariane blinked, then laughed. “You’re right.” Funny how the feeling she had to do as she was told or get in trouble persisted even now when she was on her own – not to mention being the Lady of the Lake. She looked up at the overcast. “We could go somewhere,” she said. “Not too far, because my energy’s still low – I need food. Come back at low tide.”

  “And we need to know when that is,” Wally said. “Do you think you could get us to Cockburn Town? We can easily find a tide table there somewhere.”

  Ariane laughed. “I thought you’d made that name up when I heard you mention it to Jacob. It’s a real place?”

  He nodded. “It’s on Grand Turk Island. Capital of the Turks and Caicos. Pretty much due west of here.”

  Ariane thought about it for only a moment. “I can do it. But what about Rex Major?” She looked back down into the cavern. “He’s about to confirm where the shard is, too.”

  Wally shrugged. “If it’s under all those rocks, it will take him longer to do anything about it than it will take us. Sure, like you said, he could Command the resort staff to blow up the bottom of the cascade – but that means getting them to destroy their main tourist attraction. Even his power may not be up to that task. Or else he’ll have to flat out buy the resort for umpteen million dollars and then bring in his own people to demolish the cataract. We’ve only got to wait a few hours to find out if our plan will work. He could be days away from acting.”

  Ariane held out her hand. “All right,” she said. “Cockburn Town it is. We’ll get something to eat then wait there until just before low tide, come back to the lake and ride the cataract down again. And then we’ll see what we can do.” She hesitated. “Those Schisto-things you mentioned...”

  “Schistosoma,” Wally said. “They’re a kind of worm. But you didn’t sense them. Just leeches.”

  “Yeah,” Ariane said. “And I’m sure I can make the water keep the leeches off us. So we’re good.” She reached up for the clouds with her power. She was not as strong as she’d be after she’d eaten, but she could get them to Grand Turk and Cockburn Town.

  “Of course, it could be something else, like brain-eating amoeba –” Wally began, but his voice disappeared along with his body.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Sorcerer in the Submarine

  In the submarine’s cabin, Rex Major peered up through the curved Plexiglas canopy at the underside of the sea surface. On a sunny day it would have been blue-green and sparkling, but not today, a day so grey it had made their landing on Cacibajagua Island even more knuckle-whitening than an ordinary touchdown. The pilot had assured him that modern navigational equipment and autopilot technology could land the plane safely in an emergency without any pilot input at all, but that had done nothing to reassure Merlin. He knew his fear of flying was irrational, but that was kind of the point, wasn’t it? You couldn’t be rationally argued out of a position you hadn’t been rationally argued into in the first place.

  Rationally, he should have been more terrified of a submarine than an airplane. Millions of people flew safely on airplanes every day. Only a relative handful would ever be in a submarine. And personal submarines like the little five-person model he, Flish, and pilot Peter Camus (who also managed the island resort) currently occupied were few and far between.

  But he’d never had much fear of drowning. Probably because, when he had had his full power, it was simply never going to happen. Unlike the Lady of the Lake, he could – or at least had been able to – manipulate seawater; he knew its True Name. Had he ever done anything as silly as falling into the ocean, he would simply have formed a bubble of air around himself and risen calmly to the surface.

  In any event, and for whatever reason, he found the submarine a fascinating piece of technology. Maybe four and a half metres in length and between two and three metres both tall and wide, it offered a roomy, comfortable cabin where they sat in beige leather seats, complete with armrests and cup holders, while Camus, seated behind them in the centre of the vessel, guided them through the offshore waters of the island to the underwater mouth of the cave.

  “It’s very unusual for a sea cave to be wide and tall enough for any kind of submarine to pass through it safely,” Camus was saying. “But our owner, Mr. Rounsavall, recognized the potential at once. This is our third-generation sub, and the first we’ve had that can hold five people. Our first two subs only held three.”

  Dark rock loomed ahead in the headlights’ illumination. Camus banked the vessel right, and suddenly the rock vanished, replaced by a black hole that seemed to swallow their lights whole. Camus levelled off, slowed their forward progress, and began easing the sub toward the cave mouth. A school of silvery fish fled their approach.

  “Cool,” Felicia said from Major’s left. He glanced at her. For the first time since he’d healed her leg and taken her from her hospital room to join him in Toronto, she didn’t look bored. She sat hunched forward, the red and green lights of the control panel sparkling in her wide eyes.

  Major turned his own attention ahead as Camus said, “Of course, we still have to be very cautious. The sub is tough but it wouldn’t do to run into a rock at speed.”

  Major had to agree with that.

  They eased at a snail’s pace into the cave. Fish of all colours flashed through the lights, and something much bigger and greyer flicked its tail and disappeared before Major got a good look at it. “What was that?”

  “Shark,” Camus said. “We always make sure the cave is clear of them before we bring tourist divers in here. But we don’t have anything to worry about in the sub, of course.”

  The walls were a riot of colour as well, covered with anemones, corals, and other things Major, whose knowledge of marine biology was practically nil, had no hope of identifying without the running commentary of Camus.

  “Big moray eel in that hole there, doesn’t look like he’s going to show himself today. Those red and white things are flame scallops. We don’t actually know what that is, but it’s pretty, isn’t it?”

  Major tuned him out, but Felicia drank it all in. “Oh, wow,” he heard her murmur once. He glanced at her, and smiled.

  But the smile faded as he looked forward again. He wasn’t here to sightsee. He had the shard of Excalibur in his pocket. He pulled it out and, as Camus guided them along the cavern with delicate pushes and pulls of the joystick, put it in his left hand and reached it out to Felicia.

  She was looking up and didn’t see him. He poked her with it. “Hey!” she said, turning angry eyes his way. He jerked a nod at the shard. She glanced down, sighed, and took hold of the other end. Then she turned her attention to the cavern walls again.

  Major knew Camus could see what they were doing. He also didn’t care. He’d paid so much money to have sole use of the island he was quite certain he could do pretty much anything he wanted without attracting comment.

  Merlin had felt nothing from the shard while he held it in his own hand; Ariane’s possessing two of the shards blocked him from accessing its power on his own. But the blood of Arthur ran through Flish’s veins as it did through Wally’s: the sword, awakened from its long sleep to the possibility of being reforged, would speak to the chosen heirs of the king who had once wielded it just as it would to the Lady of the Lake, whose magic had originally caused it to be made.

  Now the barely-there thread of magic that was all he could draw to himself through the almost-closed door into Faerie swelled into a bright rope of power – a faint shadow of what he had once had at his beck and call, but enough to allow him to extend his magical senses beyond the hull of the submarine and into the cavern beyond.

  Where he felt...nothing.

  In a way, it wasn’t a surprise. After researching this place, he’d always thought the most likely location for the shard was the cataract chamber, where fresh water
flowed into the sea through the cave’s inland entrance.

  He kept his senses extended, but still felt nothing, as they continued to crawl through the cavern. It was some seven hundred metres in length, if he remembered accurately – a short walk on the surface, but down here, a half-hour underwater journey.

  Looking forward, he saw something new: a glow of light that did not come from the sub’s headlights. “Cataract chamber,” Camus said. “We’re almost there.”

  The glowing opening drew slowly nearer. Major sat forward, using the power he drew from the shard to reach out with his senses like a snake extending its tongue to taste the air. It has to be there, he told himself fiercely. It has to be!

  And then, abruptly, he felt it, a sudden shock, like the feeling of touching metal on a dry winter’s day after shuffling across a carpet.

  The fourth shard!

  Ahead of them, in the cataract chamber. He was certain of it. And the sense of it was growing stronger – so strong, in fact, that when he pulled the shard of Excalibur free of Felicia’s grip – she hardly seemed to notice or care – he could still feel it.

  They entered the chamber. He could see the troubled water at the surface, where the waterfall cascaded down from the outside world. Artificial lights made the water sparkle as it had not done in the overcast outside world. Camus turned off the headlights. “We can bring divers in here no matter where we are in the tides,” he said, “but the sub can only come in within about an hour and a half either side of high tide, which is around 11:30 a.m. today. The cataract’s not quite as spectacular at high tide, of course.”

  “That’s fine,” Major said. “I’m happy to see it. We’ll be disembarking?”

  Camus nodded. “At the dock up ahead. I sent Jacob Lewis around by foot earlier to make everything ready: some bumpers and ropes have to be rigged if we’re going to stop here. I can see him up there now.” He brought the sub to a halt, though Major could still feel it rising and falling as the water surged around them in response to the distant ocean swell.

  “Bit delicate this,” Camus said. “Done it before, of course, but it’s not something we normally do on the tourist trips; we just come in and turn around and make our way out again. But you said you wanted to see the cataract chamber, so...” He fell silent as he nudged the sub around and reversed it toward the pier. There were a couple of heavy bumps, some scraping noises, and then a sharp rap on the hatch behind them.

  “We’re tied up,” Camus said. “Hold on another minute.” He pushed the joystick forward, and the nose of the sub slanted down, though their seats swivelled to remain horizontal. Major looked down past his feet at the bottom of the cavern. There was no riot of sea life in here as there had been in the outer part; mostly, the rocks were bare except for a bit of green fuzz.

  The hatch behind them opened. “Welcome to the cataract chamber,” a deep voice said.

  Major twisted around to see Camus climbing out of his seat to one side, a tight fit because of the various controls; then he folded away his pilot’s seat to provide them access to the steep staircase that led up to the outside world. Major got out of his own seat and clambered up that staircase to the boarding platform, complete with handrails, now more-or-less level at the stern of the sub while the bow pointed down. He nodded to a tall, thin black man, and then took a good-sized step upward onto the wooden dock. He turned to help Flish up then went immediately to the railing to look at the cataract.

  The tide was now so high the top of the cavern was no more than four metres – on average – from the top of the rising and falling seawater, which sloshed within half a metre or two of the top of the dock. The cataract itself was little more than a brief rush of white foam down black rocks. Major stared at it. Then he turned to Camus and the other man, reached for the thread of power from Faerie, and Commanded, “You will pay no attention to what the girl and I say to each other.”

  They immediately turned away and began talking to each other as Felicia came up behind him. “Well?” she said, sounding sullen again. Her brief moment of forgetting herself and actually acting like a human being in the submarine was clearly past. “Is it here?”

  “It’s here,” Major said. He shifted his gaze downward, and frowned. “But it’s underwater, somewhere. Somewhere deep.” He glanced at her. “Listen for it,” he said. “You have Arthur’s blood in your veins. You might be able to sense it yourself.”

  Felicia gave him a skeptical look. But she closed her eyes and cocked her head to one side. After a moment she opened her eyes again. “I can’t feel anything.”

  “Try this,” Major said, and held out the shard.

  She took the other end, as she had in the sub, and suddenly her eyes widened. “Oh!” she said in wonder. “I can feel it! It’s like...a spark. Or something.”

  “Excellent,” Major said.

  The girl let go of her end of the shard, and Major pocketed it again. Felicia peered down into the water. The submerged lights showed the pile of tumbled rocks at the base of the cataract. “If it’s down there, how do we get to it?”

  “Are you a good swimmer?” Major said.

  Felicia glanced at him skeptically. “Yeah. But I can’t dive all the way down there. Not and stay down long enough to do anything.”

  “Not now,” Major said. “But this is high tide. At low tide...perhaps something can be done.”

  Felicia looked down into the depths again. “If it’s buried under those rocks, you’ll need dynamite or a backhoe to shift them.”

  “If that’s what it takes, then that is what I’ll use,” Major said. “But let’s not rush to that conclusion. First, we’ll wait until low tide. Then you can take a swim and see what’s what.”

  He turned away from the view of the cataract. Behind them Jacob Lewis and Camus were still engaged in muttered conversation. Camus shot a worried look at the cave entrance. “Check the lake,” Major heard him say. Lewis nodded and started up the stairs.

  The lake? Major frowned. “Is there a problem, Mr. Camus?”

  Camus turned toward him. “Nothing important,” he said smoothly – a little too smoothly; Major knew when someone was fudging the truth, and Camus was fudging for all he was worth. “Jacob is concerned about the state of the trail up to Lake Tanama – that’s the lake that feeds the cataract – after the storm we had a couple of weeks ago, especially with another storm coming in later today. I’ve told him to go check it out.”

  “Uh-huh,” Major said. He sighed, and reached again for his thread of power. “Tell me the truth,” he Commanded. “What did Jacob Lewis say to you?”

  Camus replied at once. “There were two shipwrecked kids in the hut upstairs when Lewis got here this morning,” he said. “Teenagers, wearing swimsuits. They said they sailed out of Cockburn Town, got lost, and capsized trying to come ashore here. He said he told them to wait upstairs, but when he went up later, they’d vanished. He’s worried they’ve run into the interior somewhere and he didn’t want you to bump into them – I made it very clear to him this morning that nothing was to be allowed to disrupt your visit.”

  Merlin swore. He didn’t do it very often, and the word he used was from Faerie and meant nothing to anyone else on Earth in this age, but it was the worst swearword he knew and he saved it for when he was especially annoyed...which he was now.

  Two “shipwrecked” teens who vanished into thin air?

  He knew, where magic was involved, coincidences were often nothing of the kind; and where the quest for the shards of Excalibur was concerned, there was no doubt: the two teens could only be Wally and Ariane. Somehow, though he would have sworn it was impossible, they had found out where he was. And if he – and Felicia – could feel the shard down at the bottom of the pool, so could they.

  “It was them, wasn’t it?” Felicia said. “My brother and that bitch.”

  “Almost certainly,” Major said.

  “How did they track us to this island?”

  “I don’t know,” Major said, tho
ugh it galled him to admit it.

  “At least they don’t have the shard,” Felicia said. She glanced back at the cataract. “I can still feel it. It’s down there.”

  “No, they don’t,” Major said.

  “We can’t let them have it,” Felicia said, and the sudden, angry edge to her voice that made his eyes widen. “It’s mine.”

  Mine, actually, Major thought, but he didn’t correct her. She wants them to fail as much as I do. Maybe even more.

  He snorted. Who was he kidding?

  No one wanted Wally and Ariane to fail as much as he did.

  “They won’t get it,” he said out loud. “Powerful though the Lady of the Lake has made Ariane, she can do nothing with salt water. They have no way to retrieve it.”

  “Do you?” Felicia said.

  “Maybe,” Major said. “As I said, if I have to, I’ll Command that the cavern be blasted apart. But I may not need to. I may have another way. Before we take any action, though, we need to be completely sure where the shard is, and how deeply buried.” He released the thread of power, and Camus blinked. He wouldn’t remember what he’d just told them. “This cavern is fascinating,” Major said, as if he had just turned back to Camus, “but I’d really like to see it at low tide. Can we come back then?”

  “Sure,” Camus said. “But not by sub. I think you said neither of you are trained divers?”

  “That’s right,” Major said. “And I don’t imagine six hours is enough to learn.”

  Camus smiled. “No. We offer a learn-to-dive package that culminates with a guided dive into the cave, but it’s a week-long program. But if you just want to see the cataract chamber at low tide, you can walk here from the resort. There’s a path that follows the shoreline. Or if you prefer the scenic route, you can hike up to the top of the hill to see Lake Tanama, and then come down a rather steep trail that parallels the stream.”